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This is pretty cool. I have a few friends who could benefit from the ease of Hero Lab (and who have jealously watched my wife and I run our characters from our iPads) but have hesitated to adopt it due to the price point for obtaining all the materials they would want to work with. I'll be pointing this out to them.
sup fat Valeros
uh oh
I spent most of the latter half of '14 playing characters (both in PFS and in a home RotRL AP campaign) from level 8 to level 12, with very little play during that time on characters below that range. Before this stretch of time, most of my pathfinder gaming in general had been in the range of levels between 1 and 7, especially when in PFS. So, long story short: I got a significant taste of "higher level" play, at least in terms of the pre-retirement range for PFS characters. As my "high-level" PFS characters approach their retirement and my RotRL home game takes a (scheduled) hiatus, I have found myself having to start some new PFS characters at level 1 or level 2, depending on credit accrued...and I'm pretty underwhelmed, it just feels like they're all so weak, simple and/or boring. I've had a few false starts, concepts that sounded good to me but that obviously I just couldn't fully realize with a single character level and 150gp. I find myself looking at higher level abilities and progression items...most of which wouldn't come into play until beyond level 4, 6 or even higher. As an aside, I'm purely asking from a mechanics perspective. I can generally come up with personalities, character hooks, descriptions, roleplaying ideas etc. that are enjoyable for me and put smiles on the faces of my fellow players/gms. I am at a bit of an impasse/block almost purely with the crunch, not the fluff. So, in regards to what advice I'd like...where do you all start, level-wise, when building your PFS character's mechanics? Level 4? Level 6? Level 12? Do you build up, from say level 1 to a higher level? Do you reverse-engineer, say building the starting character at a starting level of whatever and then strip off levels, allowing you to plot how the concept might work at lower tiers? Do you even bother with low level play, or just accrue GM credit?
Do you do something I haven't listed? tl;dr - going back to level 1 or level 2 fills me with boring sad and I feel pretty limited so tell me how you build instead and help me be not sad when building low level characters for PFS
At 8th level, and every 3 levels thereafter (13th and 18th level), the spiritualist gains a new way to use her bonded manifestation. Do the abilities gained at later levels from the Bonded Manifestation (Su) stack, or do you have to actively choose which one is active at any given time? For example, if my 8th level Spiritualist activates their Bonded Manifestation, would they have both the +4 AC as well as the Ghost Touch ability on their attacks, or would I have to choose to activate one or the other?
alright partner keep on rollin' baby you know what time
this is like how I live blog
keeps everyone posted on my up-to-the-minute status the entire time
...I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
My wife Lamontia currently plays a level 8 'Oradin' in PFS, essentially a paladin with a dip into Life Oracle.
Now, in our last PFS scenario, she ran into a GM ruling on her character's "Life Link" revelation, one that we hadn't encountered before. Life Link Description from PRD:
From the Life Mystery: Life Link (Su): As a standard action, you may create a bond between yourself and another creature. Each round at the start of your turn, if the bonded creature is wounded for 5 or more hit points below its maximum hit points, it heals 5 hit points and you take 5 hit points of damage. You may have one bond active per oracle level. This bond continues until the bonded creature dies, you die, the distance between you and the other creature exceeds medium range, or you end it as an immediate action (if you have multiple bonds active, you may end as many as you want as part of the same immediate action). Now, here's what happened. My wife's Oradin had Life Link'd my character, a level 9 Inquisitor with 84 HP. First Round of Combat:
Near the beginning of the combat, my Inquisitor took some pretty solid damage from an enemy spell, somewhere between 20 and 30 points of damage, if memory serves. I took my turn in the Initiative order for the round and my PC attacked an enemy. Later in this same round, Lamontia's Oradin had her turn and at the start of it, healed me for 5 HP with the Life Link. Second Round of Combat:
This time, the enemy spellcaster changed targets, so when my turn came up in this round I had not taken any further damage, but was still down from the previous spell around 20 HP from my max total, despite Lamontia's 5 HP from last round. When Lamontia's turn came up, she told me to take another 5 HP of healing from her Life Link since I was more than 5 HP below my max HP total... GM's Ruling in Question:
...at which point the GM stopped her. He told her that no, my PC did not take 5 more points of healing, because I had incurred no damage IN THAT ROUND, despite still being roughly 20 HP below my max total from the 1st round's spell. He interpreted the words "is wounded" in the Life Link in the same way one would say "is attacked and damaged for". So, while my PC was still around 60ish HP out of a total of 84 HP, since I had NOT taken any damage in the 2nd round, the GM ruled that I could NOT be healed 5 HP through Life Link in that round. We were...a bit shocked by this ruling, as we had not encountered a single GM who shared a similar viewpoint in 8 levels of organized play. We attempted to convince the GM that his ruling was incorrect for about a minute but he was adamant about it. We did not want to hold up the game, so we went with his ruling. All in all, my character was never in any dire threat and his ruling had virtually no impact on the encounter, since a couple of turns later it was over and our party stood victorious with every PC still alive and kicking. But...is he correct on his ruling regarding Life Link? TL;DR Question: Does an Oracle's Life Link revelation allow her to heal a Life Linked companion for 5 HP on any round when the companion in question finds themselves to be 5 or more HP below their max total, or can it only be used in a round when the Life Link'd PC has actively taken damage IN THAT ROUND that keeps/takes them 5 or more HP below their total?
If I activate a Snapleaf while in a square threatened by an enemy, do I incur an Attack of Opportunity from that enemy?
okay so say I am a witch
what happens if I vomit a swarm towards another swarm? do the swarms do their normal damage to each other? or does it get super weird in a way I am no seeing, as per the rules? Also, this is mostly a PFS question, around the level 6ish area, if peeps are curious
watching you guys try to post pictures is almost as fun as the posts themselves
whoa
I would say these are going into my Barbarian Archer's Efficient Quiver as soon as they are available
honey
Yes pick up the critical fumble deck
I did a bit of digging on whether or not a character can use a combat maneuver on ally. After reading a couple of threads on here, I couldn't really find a conclusive answer. Example from a recent game I GM'd: A lower-level caster PC was tripped and knocked prone by a trollhound, at the mouth of a narrow corridor. Another PC, a higher-level with more HP and AC, was in the square behind the prone caster and initiated a Reposition Combat Maneuver. The caster PC simply allowed the maneuver, electing not to roll his CMD. So, the maneuver was successful automatically. The higher-level PC repositioned the prone caster into their own square, then used a move action to move into an unoccupied square further back, removing the caster from harm and creating room for other PCs further in the iniative order on to deal with the trollhound. So, essentially the maneuver allowed the prone caster to be removed from the threatened square, without incurring any attacks of opportunity from the trollhound that just tripped him. ...I was pretty dubious about this move, but allowed it as this was a PFS session and I was quite concerned that this newer PC (the caster) was about to meet his maker, but, I only allowed it with the caveat that from that moment on in the game, I would not allow this maneuver on an ally. Nor in any future games. Here are my problems: 1. While using this maneuver on a "foe" is specified, no where is "ally" specified. 2. Using this on ally essentially guarantees success, since they will not use their CMD against the maneuver. So, not matter how bad your CMB might be, you have this in your pocket to use. 3. Using this maneuver on a prone ally sounds fishy. 4. There are similar feats, such as Friendly Switch, that accomplish similar moves. So, thoughts? Should this be allowed or not?
Okay so I know that most of my posts make practically zero sense but I am going to try and focus here for a few minutes. My wife and I play in a homebrew campaign with a really tough GM, at our LGS. It's pretty adversarial and lethal, with the GM essentially doing his best to craft encounters and baddies to simply kill the party. Most of the players (weekly game, usually about 7-9 people at the table) are pretty hardcore min/max'ers. There's little RP, little loot, and the XP system is kill-based, so if you aren't killing, you're not leveling. So, if you really really really like playing a healer or buffer, you're basically going to be stuck at the base level you started at for quite awhile, since party/RP XP is practically nil compared to what you get for soloing or halving kills. In the last session, my alchemist (lvl 5) and my wife's Oracle (lvl 6) were instrumental in taking down one of the BBEGs, one of a group of baddies that are all shards of some bigger demonic superbad-thing. Both our characters died in the process. So...we want our new characters to be BBEG-killers, preferably with some synergy, who are designed to fight a single big-bad and bring the pain. The BBEGs are generally evil outsiders, demonic, devils, etc. They usually use some sort of concealment around them (fog, clouds, etc) and they usually have some sort of Acid cloud around them that inflicts damage to melee, as well as acid blood that does damage on successful melee hits. Multiple natural attacks, frequent will saves to the party and very high HP usually round them out. Characters are built starting at level 4. No Gunslingers, Ninja or Samurai. 20-point buy. 150gp to start with. Assume the character will almost certainly be dead by level 6 or 7, so no high-level build progression. I would love to hear suggestions to two good builds, for my wife and I, to make sure that if we're going to go down, we're taking the BBEGs with us. TL;DR: Help me make two level 4 characters with 150gp worth of gear who shine against single BBEG encounters.
Or,
So, the gist of this thread is that I'm looking for pairings and trios of Pathfinder character builds that go farrrrrr beyond just being "complimentary". I'm looking for those "You got chocolate in my peanut butter" combinations that are simply unreal when played together as a pairing or cohesive team. Builds you wouldn't even try without that other person or persons by your side. I play in a couple different games of varying group sizes, but almost always with both my wife and my brother-in-law. Our games rarely see anything higher than about level 7 and while one is a bit more strict in just allowing Core and APG, the others pretty much allow anything from Core, APG, UC, UM and ARG. So, lay some combinations on me, for us to play. Stick to stuff that's around level 4 or so, as telling me how great your level 18 superdude can be is like telling me how much I'm going to enjoy the year 2149.
I'll be taking a level 4 Vivisectionist / Ragechemist Alchemist into my local hobby store game tonight. The campaign is very combat-intensive, with an often large amount of players (8 to 10 at times) going up against some pretty tough encounters. My question...how fast, round-wise, do those of you with experience in this type of build "hulk up"? I have the "Accelerated Drinker" trait to imbibe potions on a move action, but even still, having to 'cast' all of the following just seems to take a really long time: 0. Invisibility (Extract, Standard Action)
and possibly:
I plan on dipping into a level of "Drunken Brute" Barbarian at level 5, for the Rage and the "No AoOs on Potion drinking" abilities. But, in this campaign, making it to level 5 is slow and not guaranteed, as the character death rate in the group is high. I figured having access to lvl 2 Alchemist Formulae such as Invisiblity and my second Discovery (Spontaneous Healing) were better than going 3 Alch. / 1 Barb. to start. Any suggestions on how I can "hulk up" faster, or ways to get into the combat mix further? |
